TL: Hua
Lin Yanran was still trending at number three for all the wrong reasons. In the midst of all the public outrage, he posted on Weibo—an animated meme of a bear humorously “flipping out of the entertainment industry.” The post had only been up for a short while, but it already had over a thousand comments.
Ever since his debut, Lin Yanran had been plagued by negative news. When he was a popular contestant on the survival show, he still had fans to defend him in the comments. But his popularity quickly dried up, and after years of no work, he had very few fans left.
So, when he posted the meme, the handful of comments from fans defending him were quickly drowned out by a flood of vitriol from haters who had been with him for years, insulting him and his family in every way imaginable.
[You’re going to stick with this “blackened” image all the way?]
[Stop seeking attention. Get out.]
[Since you know, hurry up and get out of the entertainment industry.]
[Your skin is thicker than a city wall.]
[Too much drama. I’m going to throw up.]
[How desperate are you to even use this negative trend to get attention?]
[Trash is trash. No shame, no dignity.]
The more the haters spewed insults, the more attention the post received and the more people came to watch the spectacle.
However, the internet is vast, and not everyone is a celebrity insider who understands the drama. A small group of netizens who had been drawn in by the trending topic had a different take on the post.
[This meme is so cute, hahahaha.]
[OMG, I kind of feel like Yanran is a little bit cute.]
[Is Yanran making fun of himself? Hahaha, this guy is actually pretty interesting.]
[This guy Yanran has a really strong mentality. If I were being scolded so badly, I’d have deleted Weibo long ago.]
[You guys think he’s cute, but I think he’s pretty cool. The haters want me out of the entertainment industry, so I’ll create a meme for them. Who’s afraid?]
[So he’s trying to make his haters angry? I love it!]
Yingying, who had watched Lin Yanran post the meme but was too worried to check the comments, looked at him with great concern. “Brother, if you post on Weibo now, they’ll just scold you even more harshly…”
Lin Yanran knew this, of course.
The original owner had missed the best time to explain himself by not doing so on the show. Now, with the trending topic of him being a jerk, no one would believe his side of the story. They would just think he was making excuses.
Since that was the case, he saw no reason to say more.
Closing the laptop, Lin Yanran gently massaged his finger joints and smiled at Yingying, reassuring her. “It’s fine. I’m just following the will of the people and giving them a place to vent.”
Yingying looked at him, confused, only half understanding.
She had been worried that after such widespread online harassment, he would retreat into himself and say nothing, as he had in the past. But his current reaction suggested he didn’t care at all what people said about him.
Yingying suddenly realized that his mindset was far better than she had imagined.
“When can I be discharged?”
Lin Yanran’s voice brought Yingying back to reality.
“The doctor said they need to re-examine your foot injury in a little while. If it’s fine, you can be discharged. It should be around 4 p.m.,” she said, checking the time.
Lin Yanran looked down at his foot. “Foot injury?”
Yingying nodded, thinking he had forgotten. “Yes… Didn’t the program team say there would be a collaborative stage for the mentors? You were afraid of not performing well and bringing down the contestants, so you hired a teacher to teach you some basic dance moves. But you sprained your right foot right at the start.”
“It should be all better now, right? It’s been a long time.”
Lin Yanran nodded. He tried moving his right foot and felt no pain.
After confirming that he was mostly okay, he opened the contract Ding Weikang had thrown on his lap.
He had only glanced at it before and wasn’t clear on the specifics of the original owner’s contract with the company. But from Ding Weikang’s repeated threats, Lin Yanran knew it had to be a very unfair contract.
He quickly read through the contents. He had been prepared for a bad contract, but only now did he fully realize how truly one-sided it was.
The company had given the original owner a bunch of empty promises but was not held responsible if they didn’t deliver.
In return, the original owner had to be their workhorse, giving the company 80% of all his income. He also had to cover all the expenses for his events in the industry because the company said they would deduct those fees from his share.
The most absurd part was that every job the original owner took had to be approved by the company. If they didn’t approve it, he couldn’t take it. If he took it on his own, it was a breach of contract, requiring him to pay the company a penalty of fifty million yuan.
Additionally, if he wanted to terminate the contract even one day early, he would still have to pay the company the fifty million yuan penalty.
The contract had many other overbearing clauses. The person who drafted this document seemed to have the explicit intention of sucking the original owner dry.
After understanding all this, Lin Yanran finally understood why Ding Weikang was so fearless in threatening him. Just those three clauses were enough to hold him hostage: he couldn’t afford to pay, he couldn’t break the contract, and the company could freeze his activities whenever they wanted.
Lin Yanran looked at the contract’s duration: a total of fifteen years. There were still ten years left…
If he had to wait that long, it would be a complete waste.
This contract definitely had to be terminated, but not right now.
Lin Yanran knew he was on his own against a whole company. He didn’t have the upper hand in terms of energy or finances. To win a legal battle like this, he would need to hire a highly skilled lawyer to handle it once and for all.
Lin Yanran quickly searched on his phone for the best lawyers who specialized in contract disputes.
After some browsing, he had a few suitable candidates in mind.
However, famous lawyers don’t come cheap. With a bad feeling about the original owner’s financial situation, he immediately checked his remaining assets.
After carefully adding up the balances of his bank account, Alipay, and WeChat, Lin Yanran fell silent.
The original owner’s total cash on hand was less than ten thousand yuan…
This was a far cry from the daily salary of 2.08 million that people often joked about in the industry.
Lin Yanran quietly closed all the apps.
Before he could think about hiring a lawyer, he needed to figure out how to make money.
He sighed, still confused.
Even with such an unfair split with the company, the original owner had been in the industry for five or six years and had even been popular at one point. He also didn’t have any bad habits. No matter how badly he was doing, a couple of commercial gigs should have kept him from being this broke.
Lin Yanran frowned. He stared at his phone and suddenly remembered something. He quickly pulled up the bank transfer texts he had just looked at.
He scrolled up and saw that a week ago, the original owner had transferred five million yuan.
After the transfer, he had sent a message to an unknown number: [The money you spent raising me is all paid back. We owe each other nothing now.]
Based on the message, the money was clearly a repayment to his wealthy adoptive parents, who had cruelly kicked him out after finding their biological son.
Lin Yanran’s beautiful eyebrows furrowed even more.
Yingying’s voice suddenly came from outside the door.
She knocked and entered with the doctor, who came over to the bed.
Lin Yanran put his phone away and cooperated with the doctor’s examination.
The doctor told him his foot was fine and that he just needed to rest. After that, he hailed a cab to go home.
His afternoon conversation with Ding Weikang had not gone well. After the agent left, he had all the company-provided equipment, including the minivan, taken away.
After an hour-long trip, Lin Yanran finally returned to the original owner’s home.
The house was very simple and bare, a small apartment of about sixty square meters.
The only somewhat valuable things in the whole place were some professional equipment in the music room. The other rooms were sparsely decorated, a clear sign of poor finances.
After seeing Yingying off, Lin Yanran went to the kitchen and opened the fridge to make dinner.
He hadn’t eaten much since he woke up, and it was now almost 8 p.m. His stomach had been growling for a while.
There wasn’t much in the fridge, but after searching carefully and pulling out every usable ingredient, he managed to make a simple dinner for himself.
After a quick tidying of the apartment and a shower, when he had some free time and picked up his phone again, he found a few more messages on it.
The latest was from Yingying, a WeChat message reminding him that there was a recording for Super Idol the next morning.
The others were all from Ding Weikang.
The agent had called him, but when he didn’t answer, he sent over a dozen messages, alternately threatening and coaxing him to go to the Pearl Hotel to meet President Li.
Lin Yanran ignored all of them. He lay in bed, scrolled on his phone for a bit, and fell asleep.
—
At midnight, the director’s team for Super Idol was holding an emergency meeting.
“Boss, customer service reported today that viewers are all complaining about Yanran. The official Weibo’s comments and DMs are being flooded with insults. What should we do about this?”
As soon as he finished, another person immediately chimed in. “Even though Yanran’s situation is negative, he’s definitely brought a lot of buzz to our show. Our viewership for the latest episode went up by 70%. The effect is great. As long as he’s on the show, we won’t lack for trending topics.”
“Are you going to throw away our reputation for a short-term benefit? We’re about to officially announce the main mentor in the next episode. With his star power, we won’t lack viewers.”
“Negative publicity is still publicity. Don’t think that because the audience is complaining now, they won’t be tuning in next time. They’ll be on the edge of their seats, wanting to see how Yanran will target Xuan Yihan again.”
The two team members’ opinions were clearly at odds. One wanted to kick Yanran out, and the other wanted to keep him. They were arguing heatedly from the very beginning.
Hearing that his subordinates were divided into two factions, the director sitting in the middle frowned and said nothing.
He glanced at the two messages he had just received from higher-ups and felt the situation was becoming even more daunting.
Finally, he threw the problem back to his team. “CE just had someone come over to talk to us. They want us to replace Yanran.”
The first team member, who wanted to get rid of Yanran, nodded happily. “That’s great. Just let him go. We’ll only have to pay a little bit in breach of contract fees.”
The director ignored him and continued, “The Xuan Corporation also had someone speak with the higher-ups. They are also very unhappy with Yanran’s behavior.”
The Xuan Corporation was the book’s protagonist, Xuan Yihan’s family.
Although Xuan Yihan hadn’t yet revealed his identity as the son of a wealthy family, his parents had already done some backstage maneuvering with the program team.
So, internally, Xuan Yihan’s connection to the Xuan Corporation was no secret; only the contestants were unaware.
After hearing the director’s words, the team member who had defended Yanran sighed helplessly, seeing that Xuan Yihan’s parents had extended their influence so far, acting as if they wanted to clear this obstacle for their son. “This Yanran sure has made a lot of enemies…”
The other one smiled. “That’s great, isn’t it? As long as Yanran leaves, everything will be settled. The audience will be happy, and both CE and the Xuan Corporation will be pleased.”
The director shook his head in disagreement.
He was silent for a moment, then pointed to his thinning hair. “But what you don’t know is that Yanran was specifically requested by our biggest sponsor.”
The director’s statement shocked both team members into silence. After nearly a minute, one of them tentatively asked, “Sponsor…?”
“Boss, are you talking about Lin…?”
The director nodded. “Yes.”
Looking at the director’s increasingly bald head, the two finally understood why he was so worried.
One side was pressuring them to replace someone, but that person was a mentor that the investor had specifically asked for. If they replaced him, wouldn’t that be a slap in the face to their main sponsor?
“No wonder, Director Song, you were so obsessed with inviting Yanran. Now I finally understand.”
“But if Yanran has the Lin family as his backing, why didn’t anyone take down the trending topic for him?”
The director shook his head. “The Lin family isn’t his backing. He just got lucky. He has no connections, no relationship with the Lin family.”
The director wanted to elaborate but felt that now wasn’t the time. “This whole thing is a bit complicated, and I can’t explain it all right now. So, what do you think we should do about this situation?”
The team members looked at each other, and the conference room fell silent.
After a long time, someone finally suggested, “How about this? We have a new episode to record tomorrow anyway. Let’s keep Yanran for one more episode and see how he does. Even though he doesn’t have a backing, he was still the one the Lin Corporation wanted. Director, you should contact the person in charge there first, tell them about Yanran and the Xuan family’s situation, and see what they say. If the Lin Corporation doesn’t want to protect him, then let him go.”
The director felt a pang of pity after hearing his suggestion.
But in the face of capital, he couldn’t make the decision on his own, so he agreed to this temporary solution. “Then we’ll do that for now.”
